Internal bleeding from major blood vessels can cause death within minutes or hours. Vascular trauma associated with accidents and violence (e.g., falls, automobile accidents, gunshots, etc.) and ruptured aneurysms are the most common causes of internal bleeding. For example, in the United States, about 15,000 people die annually from internal bleeding following ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysms alone, and thousands more die from internal bleeding following other types of vascular trauma. Unfortunately, mortality rates for most types of internal bleeding from major blood vessels are currently greater than 50% and have shown little or no improvement over the last several decades. Considering these relatively high rates of occurrence and mortality, innovative treatments for internal bleeding have the potential save thousands of lives annually.
Some conventional approaches to treating internal bleeding include temporarily occluding injured blood vessels upstream from vascular injuries and then repairing the blood vessels prior to reestablishing blood flow. These approaches, however, typically require either large surgical incisions for open surgery or fluoroscopic guidance for endovascular surgery, both of which are usually possible only in hospital operating rooms and trauma centers. Since the window for successfully treating internal bleeding is often very short (e.g. less than one or two hours in some cases), many patients die before they can be transported to a suitable location for treatment.
When a patient is able to reach a suitable location in time, the attending clinician typically must decide whether to perform open surgery or endovascular surgery based on the circumstances. Open surgery can have more serious complications than endovascular surgery. Conventional endovascular surgery, however, typically is slower and more challenging to execute reliably than open surgery. For example, conventional endovascular surgery typically makes use of catheters and other devices designed primarily for non-emergency use. These devices typically have intricate operational protocols poorly suited for emergencies. For these and other reasons, there is a public health need for innovation in the field of emergency endovascular surgery, such as innovation with regard to techniques and devices that facilitate more rapid and/or simplified occlusion of major blood vessels prior to vascular repair than are typically achievable using conventional techniques and devices.